


In Remembrance Of The Lost Child

by ChiDrinksTea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Childhood, F/M, Mourning, Sad, inspired by elena ferrante, kita shinsuke' childhood, looking back at memories, slight slice of life you could say, suffering and mourning, tragic disappearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28556901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChiDrinksTea/pseuds/ChiDrinksTea
Summary: ❝ THE CHILD WASLOST FOREVER. ❞in which this is thestory of the lost child, and the boy, who growing up as a close friend, looks back ten years later and remembers the disappearance.or, in which there arethose who leaveand thosewho stay.inspired by elena ferrantekita x fem!reader
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	1. looking back

Kita doesn't remember your birth, not clearly at least, but he knows that you were born only one month or so after his little sister. He was very young, too, at the time, but he generally remembers the time around his sister's birth very fondly. He liked being an older brother even then.

You were his sister's best friend almost immediately. It was a perfect arrangement: the two of you were almost the same age, you lived only two minutes apart, and your mother respected his grandmother a lot, so that she would always entrust her to watch you and take care of you, even when you were still very young. By that time, his parents were already gone, and his grandmother very much appreciated the extra distraction. She even waved away your mother when she tried to pay her for taking care of you.

His grandmother loved you, she really did, and as a result, Kita grew up not only with a younger   
sister, but also with you.

As a baby, you were very bright, he remembers that, and he remembers, too, how everyone noticed this pretty early on. It was a very happy time for your mother, because she was young, didn't really understand all the things she was supposed to do as a mother, and yet, despite this, you were doing extremely well, drawing eyes to your startling physical presence.

You were very recognizable by your voice, specific in your gaze, and charming in your gestures as a child. Everyone noticed, everyone commented: look, how she narrows her eyes, she's a thinker, and someone who understands, look, she even widens her eyes when she understands.

You grew up arousing admiration and affection in everyone, because people saw you, felt tender, and wanted to cuddle you close to their chest. You were a very good child.

And in the first years of your life, because the two of you were the same age, Kita's sister often felt compared to you, or unsure of what she could do, because surely, next to you, all her achievements were nothing. The absence of their parents didn't help, Kita knows, but it was also the fact that she took care of you everyday, you, who quickly learned to sit up, and spoke clearly at a young age, without slurring your words.

It was true that she just lagged behind you, and even at a very young age, became somewhat sad because of this.

Kita remembers now how he felt worried about his sister, how his grandmother worried, when the two of you were four, and he was seven.

The two of you, his sister and you, were so very different.

You were filled with lots of energy that resulted in curiosity, which then led you to learn things quickly and efficiently. For your age, you had a large vocabulary, you knew how speak in complete sentences, and you even knew how to get rid of the thick accent of the village. His sister, on the other hand, who was by no means slow, but who always seemed slightly lost in in her own world, didn't learn how to speak properly until she was a bit older, and wasn't someone who was openly curious about the world.

You were different, because even at a young age she preferred to retreat inside of herself, and even though you were friends, she suffered a bit because of your joyful words, because of your extraordinary capacity to understand things and to verbalize this understanding, too. His sister felt that next to you, all her virtues were reduced to nothing.

But in the end, it wasn't something that really bothered the relationship between the two of you, and Kita knows this, because all his life, he's never seen a relationship like the one between you and his sister. The two of you were like two halves of a whole, and one could not be, should not be, without the other. It was always a weird sight: you without his sister, or his sister without you.

The two of you were a duo, never willingly apart, and this became more apparent after his grandmother took his sister to a pediatrician, and everyone afterwards was sure that nothing was wrong with her. His sister was an uneasy child, and she wasn't lively like you, but she was in good health, and as long as people paid attention to her, too, everything was fine.

It was a good time.

━━━━

Kita used to carry his sister on his shoulders, because that was something that always cheered her up. He was very good to her, very caring, not at all rough, and he didn't treat his sister like a lot of the other older brothers in the village did theirs: he looked after his little sister, maybe even too much at times. Despite this, he never forgot about you either, because you were also always there. Always next to his sister, always tidy and neat as you were, your long braids blowing in the wind, your eyes shining with affection.

He treated you both well.

His school was far away from the village, and the bus ride was long, but everyday when he came home in the evening, his sister, and you beside her, were there to greet him. The two of you even offered to grab his schoolbag, and help him carry it the few minutes it took to reach the house from the bus stop. Although he thanked both you of politely, it was something he never allowed, and he always laughed it off. He recalls how he instead went up to the two of you, patted your heads, gave you sweets, small presents, and told you calm, gentle stories about his school day.

All the while, he made sure to pay attention to both of you.

His grandmother was always telling him how important it was that he be attentive to both you girls. She said: taking care of yourself is important, and one aspect of taking care of yourself, is taking care of those people who are important to you, and play a role in your life.

Kita understood quickly why you needed to be taken care of, too, and it was something he did gladly, in his own quiet way.

It was true that his sister was the one who had confidence and self worth issues since the village only seemed to pay any attention to you, but it was also true that at home, you lacked the proper care that his sister experienced. Your mother tried, Kita now knows this, but she was young, she was poor, and her boyfriend, your father, was not a good man. He wasn't there often, but your mother nevertheless worked hard to make a living for all three of you. You were too young, and you didn't understand everything, but of course you did notice that your mother wasn't around half as much as you would have liked, and that you were forced to even spend some holidays over at Kita's place.

Kita noticed that you noticed, and made it a habit to, whenever he carried his sister on his shoulders, after a while put her down, and pick you up instead. He wanted it to cheer you up, too, and after his days at school, you would also get a toy identical to the one he gave his younger sister.

━━━━

Growing up, you were in every sense of the word gregarious, popular everywhere you went, and able to charm people with your good pronunciation and clear eyes. People said that if anyone would one day manage to leave the village and do something extraordinary out in the world, it would be you. Kita didn't notice it back then, the extent of your influence, but now thinking back, he remembers how even the old, rude man selling the newspapers no one wanted to buy —when you ran into him—was charmed by you.

That man never treated anyone kindly, argued with the adults, called the kids mean nicknames, and especially was mean to the loud boys in the village. He called the giggling girls who walked past him cackling chickens in a barn (what are cackling chickens talking about on this day?), shouted after the loud boys, telling them that they were good for nothing pigs (oi, you pigs can go run now to your oink oink houses, back to your oink oink parents), and said nothing to the quiet kids like him and his sister, even ignoring them when they greeted him politely.

You, however, he greeted, and he called you the girl who picks flowers (How is the girl who picks flowers?), and even sometimes handed you a free newspaper.

But while you were a charming, shining bundle of light, Kita recognized even then that some of your qualities were slightly off at times. He knows now his grandmother knew all along, too, but as a kid, as kids often do, he thought he was the only one to notice how you were also a very submissive young girl in every sense of the word. This was not really a good thing.

While on the one hand it indeed was always his sister who followed after you, you were also the one who followed after his sister, who, unlike you, never gave in when she knew she was in the right (and even when she knew she wasn't). You were different here, because even when the other person was in the wrong and you knew it, you would quickly, without a fight, more often than not give in out of fear of not being liked.

There are a couple of moments he can remember when that submissive quality of yours made an appearance. One of those instances in particular keeps appearing in his head like a reoccurring dream. It's a conversation he overheard by chance, but it's something he'll never forget.

His sister said to you on that one day: "Let's go play in the water near the river."

"You shouldn't tell me where to play."

"I'm not telling, I'm saying we could."

"I'm afraid of the river. I only cross it to get to the flowers."

"We could still go, maybe we can ask nii-san to help us."

"Don't order me to go!"

"I'm not ordering you. If you really don't want to, I'll forget it. Sorry, Y/n."

You then looked at his sister in slight confusion and fear, and Kita can still picture your exact expression today. It wasn't a nice expression, but it told him a lot, and while he didn't understand it then, he does now. You, at age six, didn't know how to say no to something you didn't want to do, and when you wanted to refuse, you soon gave in anyway, even when the person, like his sister, wasn't at all interested in pressuring you.

You continued staring in fear, your lower lip trembling, before you hastily said: I changed my mind, I want to go to the river, and let's go without your brother, I'm not afraid.

Kita's happy that at least on this occasion, because he was there to overhear the conversation, he was able to accompany you down to the river that you feared.

━━━━

Shortly before his thirteenth birthday, Kita left the village, and went to stay with a friend. The way to school was a very long one from home, and it was much easier when he lived near the school. His friend and classmate, Aran, was the one who offered, and Aran's family was very welcoming to him.

A range of new experiences opened up for him, and as the days went on, Kita also solidified himself in this new routine. He called regularly to greet his grandmother, and to say goodnight to you two girls. But he only really came to visit when he noticed that he could go on living with this new routine, one where he didn't see his family or you on a daily basis. He came back home when he realized that he was capable of living without the village, but by that time, Kita knew that most of the damage had been done. Aran has a sister, too, who is only two years younger than his sister and you, and while you were never bitter or angry about him leaving for a while, his younger sister was very hurt, felt that Aran's sister replaced her, and subsequently she retreated into herself for a while.

Back then, his sister was a girl who measured her self worth by observing how other people treated her. When she saw photos of her brother standing next to Aran's sister, she felt very hurt, very dispensable. She thought he preferred everyone over her, and tried, perhaps without realizing it, to get you to feel the same way.

But you adored Kita. You affectionately called him 'Shin-chan', smiled brightly around him, and fiddled with the flowers in your hair whenever he placed a hand on your shoulder, or took you by the wrist. In your eyes, he knew that he could do no wrong.

When his sister in a jealous outburst told you that he was going to marry a girl he met at his school, you grew slightly sad, but you never really got angry at him, because that was just not something you would do. You rarely got mad, ever. You told his sister: Shin-chan likes the word 'logical', and it means that something comes from a clear reason, so if Shin-chan is gone for a while, and if he's going to marry a girl from there, it's definitely because there's a very smart reason behind it.

You always tried to protect him, even though it was something he rarely needed. He was a very good kid, quiet, with good grades, and good achievements, and clear goals, but you still looked at him in such awe that got you slightly upset when others weren't as impressed by him as you were.

Sometimes in his head Kita tries to recapture, or maybe reminisce about this fierce loyalty of yours. He thinks that maybe, in that one especially bad week, only a day or so before he returned home, he can feel it in the most purest of forms. Your fierce loyalty, to both him and his sister.

He announced that he was going to come home soon, respectfully thanked Aran and his parents, let his grandmother know over the phone, and made sure that the two of you got the news as well. You were immediately very happy, ecstatic even, but his sister didn't feel well at all after hearing the news, she sounded depressed on the phone, and soon came down with a bad cold. Kita knows that this was his fault, and that his sister got sick from longing, because he wasn't there to be attentive to her. He wasn't there to help the two of you cross the river, he wasn't there to make sure the two of you weren't sweaty when you ran around in the woods, and he wasn't there to pick the two of you up, and gift you little, pretty parcels.

When he returned, he was greeted by no one. No one was at the bus station, and no one was at home, not his sister, not his grandmother and not you. This scene is so clear in his head even now: he didn't panic, he just calmly looked around the empty house after putting down his suitcase. Kita didn't even call out any names. Kita did the logical thing, and went over to your house, where your mother greeted him, and soon told him where everyone was.

Apparently, after falling into the river with a cold, his sister was admitted to the hospital because she had pneumonia. His grandmother, and you, of course, were there with her, and he was told after he called his grandmother that all he could do now was wait at home. Her exacts words: Wait at home, Shin-chan, take good care of yourself for your sister, so that she can take good care of herself, too, and look into the oven, Y/n-chan made some cookies for you, she's very proud.

He heard your meek voice call out a small "welcome back, Shin-chan" before the call ended. You didn't sound like your usual self because his sister's state depressed you. The two of you were always like that when the other didn't feel well.

Kita regrets not having been with his sister during that time, but he was able to muster a small, rare smile when she came back healthy and reluctantly threw her arms around him. That, however, did not mean everything was now okay in his sister's eyes.

She missed him, you did, too, but she was still slightly angry.

He noticed this anger in the way she would no longer want him to help her take care of herself, or even you. She wanted to do things on her own now, and since there was not a single person she adored more than you, she wanted to be the one to always take care of you. She wanted to be the only one.

She said to him once that it was her job, and not his to look after you, and even got slightly hostile with him when he, in his usual fashion, in his laconic way of speaking, tried to take care of you when you hurt yourself after falling down while playing.

Even when the smallest things happened to you, Kita recalls how his sister was always immediately alarmed and struck by a childish terror. His sister got very good at concealing her own pain, because she realized that you being in pain bothered her far more than anything else.

On this occasion, even though it was only a temporary pain in your leg, his sister wouldn't leave you alone. She devoted entire days to you, to taking care of you, by delicately spreading a herbal mixture over your leg, wrapping it, and placing strips of wet cloth on your forehead, despite the fact that you didn't have a fever. She locked the door and stayed diligently beside your bed as you rested.

When his grandmothern or your mother tried to intervene, saying that it wasn't necessary, and that you could even go out to play again, his sister wouldn't allow it, and shrieked at everyone who would come and try to disturb the two of you. The sick friend was hers and hers alone, and everyone else should leave.

Kita was not excluded from this.

But after this episode, his sister soon got better. She welcomed him again with open arms, and allowed him to play with them. She allowed you to talk to him, and you once again became a constant figure in his life. As always you were slightly overbearing, often loud, but always cheerful, and always decked in yellow. You had an affinity for yellow flowers, and you showed it by gifting your mother, his sister, and his grandmother daily wreaths of yellow flowers.

He got some, too, but only twice, and he could tell that it was different for you when you gave him flowers. It was shortly before his sister's tenth birthday that you announced your affections for him, sticking out your hand in which you held your yellow flowers. You even in the days that followed asked him to marry you, in your shy, charming manner that made your mother swoon while watching.

He still has a very vivid picture of your mother, specifically in those days, in his head. She was always proud of you, no matter what you did, and she would pick you up (you were small for your age, but still too old for that), and litter your face with little kisses while you giggled.

He didn't understand why she was so proud of your confession, but he didn't need to at the time.

After he knew of your feelings, you developed a habit of checking up on him at least every few hours in a day. You just wanted to speak with him, have proper conversations with him, because as you insisted, you were a very grown up nine-year-old. He wasn't so sure, but he always smiled at you gently nevertheless.

━━━━

One day, in a memory he remembers all too well, you called his name excitedly before jumping up and joining him on the old, brown swing he was cleaning for his grandmother. It was an old swing, and made noises you labeled ghostly ones, but his sister loved it dearly, and he didn't mind doing a little extra cleaning. His sister's birthday was coming up, anyway. He looked at you calmly, a stark contrast to your excited demeanor, and your wide eyes.

"Y/n. Is everything alright?"

"Shin-chan!"

You plopped down directly next to him so that your shoulders were touching. Then you looked up at him with your shining eyes.

"A very, very pretty woman visited our house today! From Tokyo!"

"Prettier than your Okaasan?" he asked you calmly, titling his head at your jittery tone.

"Yes."

"Even prettier than my sister?"

"No."

He raised a brow.

"Does that make my sister the prettiest of them all?"

"Yes, but also no. The two of us are equally pretty. We're the most beautiful girls in the world."

"I see."

"It's true, the lady told me."

"And what else did this lady do?"

"She's important, and she wanted to talk about my drawings."

"That's good. Good job, Y/n."

"She said I'm the next da Vinci, or something."

"She did?"

"Yes."

"Liar. Should I ask my sister?"

"No."

Why this particular memory is so vivid, Kita isn't sure, but he thinks that maybe it's because in the previous few months, you had started gaining an interest in art. His sister, of course, joined you, and soon the two of you started collaborating on various works, with precise ideas, and joyful imagination. Flowers were always there, and angels, too, because after reading some books, you decided that you really liked the image of pretty white dresses, decked in gold, and soaring, glorious wings.

His grandmother always says that this short period before was the best, because it was as if, when the two of you worked together, your minds and ideas melded into one, and the two of you seemed equally fascinating. Two peas in a pod you were, and while you might have seemed more creative, more capable, and more experienced at first glance, his sister was the more determined one, the headstrong one, and the one who pushed through her ideas in the end.

It was clear to everyone that the two of you were a team, inseparable in your bond.

And things kept getting better and better.

His sister soon realized that she was very pretty, too, and no longer felt ugly beside you. She started learning how to hold head high properly, while you also continued changing.

It was a rule between the two of you, albeit an unspoken one. If one changed, the other had to, too.

You father disappeared completely from your face, and you were slowly starting to resemble your mother, just as his grandmother said you one day would. In your nose, in your eyes, in your cheeks something very sweet, and very gentle, was becoming more and more apparent, and everyone was charmed by it. You were a very lovely young lady.

You photographed well, too, and the pretty lady from Tokyo kept returning, asking for the projects you and his sister were working on. She asked, too, if she could take some pictures of you, said that you had a fascinating face, and your mother said yes. The village then found out that your picture was going to appear in a magazine in Tokyo in a month, and even though no one really knew what it meant, everyone grew excited.

Everyone noticed that at that time the whole village was experiencing this good, wholesome feeling. It was July, too, and in the village, near the mountains, this was the most beautiful month. Even the weather held the promise that good things were going to continue to happen.

In happiness, where the sad, the tragic, is not invited, no one expects the bad to come through the door. But because this is a story Kita knows well, because it's a story he lived through, Kita knows that none of these happy events ended up unfolding as planned. He knows that where there should have have been birthday parties and celebrations, there were search parties and tears instead.

And so, no one remembers this time for the good feelings and the pleasant summer days, but rather for that dreaded day, the 4th of July in the year 2007, the day before Kita's birthday. This was the day the story, one that was supposed to be filled with success and happiness, was rechristened into the story of the lost child.

The story of that that who child was lost forever.


	2. looking too closely

Maybe it was because at first, he truly didn't understand the gravity of the situation, but back then, Kita remembers that what saddened him most about the whole ordeal was watching his sister, watching as her eyes emptied, her skin paled, and her tone of voice changed, as more and more information came to light.

You didn't come home that day from your journey to the meadow. You went off to pick yellow flowers for the wreath that you were going to gift him on his birthday the next day, but you didn't take the same way home. You went and crossed the river on your own, but you never came back home, not to your mother, not to his sister, and not to him. Not even for his birthday.

You were just gone.

And Kita remembers everything, as if it were yesterday. It's always such a vivid picture what happens next. The search parties that appeared after your disappearance, how people searched far and wide, diving into waters, marching through woods with flashlights and shouting desperately. Papers with your smiling face on them littered the neighborhood, and all the nearby schools told the children about you, and warned them to watch out.

The only name he even remembers hearing in those days is yours. He remembers saying your name once or twice as the tears silently rolled down his cheeks, with him tightly clutching at his grandmother's hand. He didn't understand in the beginning, he was sure that no one really did, not even after you were officially declared a missing person. Because it just didn't make sense, not to him, and not to anyone who knew you.

You were Y/n, who was always there, and always cheerful. You weren't the one who really had problems, you rarely even got sick, and when you did get sick, his sister cared for you extensively, until you got better. If there was ever a sheltered child... it was you.

So, Kita didn't understand, couldn't understand, but maybe there was someone else who understood immediately that something was very wrong. That person who understood didn't understand the whole situation, but she understood that something very wrong was happening. It was his sister, even though she was young. And now, as he looks back, he thinks it might be because of the bond the two you of shared. Between the two of you, there existed something indescribable, something that eminated from the confusion of childhood, and fused you into one, so that you were two halves of a whole. 

When she learned that you were gone, and that you might not be coming back, his sister felt betrayed.

The time he cried the longest, the hardest, Kita knows, is the time his little nine-year-old sister kept shouting throughout the house that she wanted to disappear, too. She kept on saying it, and didn't stop: make me disappear, I wanna go, let me disappear with Y/n. 

At first, his sister didn't even feel sad, she just wanted to go along with you. Wherever you went, she went, but now people were telling her that you were somewhere she could not follow. She didn't like hearing that at all, and got upset at the people who said it, and at you, always you. Because you left her alone. 

She screamed at everyone until they let her join in the search parties. She said to them: I'm the only one who understands Y/n, she doesn't want any of you to find her, it can only be me, so let me look for her.

Everyone looked for you along the paths leading to the big mountain, then throughout all the paths in the woods, and then again along the river that you had to cross in order to get to the meadow of yellow flowers. Many people joined in, and it seemed to Kita like it was the whole village. The old, newspaper-selling man helped, his teachers from elementary helped, your father who disappeared every other day helped, and the police who mobilized the people in neighboring villages helped, too. Everyone helped, everyone looked, and everyone was desperate.

Because you were Y/n, and it's hard to put into words what that exactly that means, but to Kita, hearing your name, even now, he can only think of hope. That was why everyone looked, why everyone cried, because you, Y/n, were the embodiment of hope, the promise of a better life, and that meant everyone wanted to see it proven: that you were Y/n, and that you could come back no matter what, bright and smiling, and make it to Tokyo.

Everyone helped, everyone wanted to, because there was no reason not to.

His sister wanted to help, too, but only in the way she saw fit. She detached herself from his grandmother, snarled nasty words at her when she tried to stop her, and joined the police in a car. Kita couldn't even try to stop her, as he should have as her older brother. Kita remembers that during that time he had trouble putting certain thoughts into words.

That day he just listened to his nine-year-old sister instead. She said to him that she was going to look for you where you would be found, and that he could stay with grandmother. That's what he did, walking the paths in the woods while holding his grandmother's hand until late into the night. No matter how often he rubbed at his eyes, he didn't let them close until they finished the entire round. They had to find you.

In the mornings following your disappearance, Kita joined his grandmother in prayer to the gods. He didn't think it would do anything, but he owed it to you to try everything. He wanted you to come back home, and he'd do many things that seemed unlike him, just so that you would come back. On one occasion, he even closed his eyes in the middle of the woods, counted to hundred, and then opened them again, thinking you'd be there when he did. You didn't appear however, you never did, and Kita at the time didn't understand why he was doing this: it wasn't logical, but he nevertheless couldn't stop.

Another one who couldn't stop their behavior was your mother, who in the words of the village, lost her mind in grief. Parents pulled their kids away from your mother on the streets, because she was starting to scare everyone.

But Kita wasn't scared, all he saw was a sad mother looking for her lost child, who she loved more than anything else in the world. All her life, your mother had to work in order to make money, and in doing so, she often sacrificed time she could have spent with you. She didn't like doing it, in fact, she hated it, but she told herself day after day that could bear the pain of seeing her child fall asleep in another woman's arm, only because the money she was making now would one day help you get a good education.

This was a impossible situation for your mother, and she couldn't deal with it in a way that seemed acceptable to others. Her situation also continued to get increasingly worse when the first onslaught of what his sister now only ominously calls the 'the attack of the telephones' started.

Everyday, your mother would get calls, and his grandmother would get them, too, and while they were always nice calls, with good intentions, and comforting words, they carried a secret poison. The poison of the false sightings.

These callers who often claimed to have seen you, allowed your mother a temporary sigh of relief, a fleeting feeling of happiness, one that said her child, you, was about to come home again. But every call, every single one, the ones that said you had been seen in a gas station just around the corner or in the woods where the path ended or in the gardens of this rich old lady, or by the houses that were covered in ice, were always, without fail, a wrong sighting. Always out of goodwill, but always painful, always a defeating blow.

Your mother couldn't cope.

She ran through the woods without shoes in search of you, didn't take showers, didn't brush her hair, and didn't eat, but was always here and there with no real reason. Always looking, but never helping, and never finding. People said she wasn't right in the head anymore, maybe because she screamed a lot, got angry at the people who didn't help, accused people, saying they took you, and threatened them with terrible things. 

It got so bad that the police intervened at a certain point.

Your mother was pronounced crazy, but it was odd, because people didn't call her crazy in a malicious way. They called her crazy in sad tones, with pitying words, and worried expressions. Kita didn't really understand at first, why were they coating insults in honey, but his grandmother soon explained.

"They are like this because they understand her grief," she said. 

"How come they understand?"

"They don't understand the experience, not really, at least. But I know now that if anyone had taken your or your sister, I would have gone mad, too, just like Y/n-chan's mother."

"Taken? Who took her?"

"We'll find out soon, Shin-chan. Y/n-chan is very bright, she'll find her way home, she always does."

This conversation happened at the exact time the village spilt into two parts, and there was the one part that believed someone had taken you away, and the other part that believed your disappearance was the result of a ill-fated tumble into the river. Majority supported the second theory, while there was a small minority, people like his grandmother and your mother, who believed in the former.

He understands now why your mother and his grandmother believed what they did. It wasn't logical, the second theory was the logical one, but the first theory allowed them, even a month after your disappearance, to cling onto the belief that you were still alive.

But it was also at this time that the police searches changed, and now, Kita knows what happened, even if back then, he couldn't describe the phenomenon he was witnessing in front of him. He noticed it as a young boy, but he could never put his finger on it, could never explain why it made him sad, why it depressed his sister, or why it worried his grandmother.

The change happened on a Sunday, a few weeks or so after your disappearance. A police officer came to the door, to their door even, and also to your mother's, and asked to speak with his grandmother alone. Kita wasn't the type of kid to argue, and he respectfully left the room without a word. 

It was a good thing his sister wasn't there, because she would not have liked it. But his sister was rarely home these days anyway, because for reasons that he didn't understand, and for reasons that worried his grandmother, his nine-year-old sister decided to stay at your mother's house with her, and slept only in your old bed. She said that even the idea of sleeping anywhere else terrified her.

His grandmother could say nothing to bring his sister back, and Kita couldn't even bring himself to try. 

The policemen talked to his grandmother, Kita didn't eavesdrop, that wasn't something he did, but afterwards, he went to peek his head outside. He remembers that at first he wanted to ask his grandmother what was going on, but then, as he watched his grandmother, who was leaning heavily against the door, eyes closed, an expression of pain on her face, the desire to do so vanished. He couldn't look away, however, and he continued watching as his grandmother breathed heavily, buried her head in her hands, and then was able to stand up only with the help of a walking stick.

It was at that time that he remembered his grandmother had also been someone who raised you, who watched you grow up. It was at that time that he realized that your disappearance was affecting everyone, in ways he could not even begin to comprehend.

But it was at that time that your story changed from that of a missing person, to that of a missing body.

━━━━

A story soon solidified itself, and became, in the eyes of everyone in the village, confirmed fact. To them, this is, without a doubt, what happened that night. This is even the version of the story of the lost child that is still told today, ten years later. This version is, and Kita is sure of this, at least something that resembles the true story that they may never know.

Because apparently, there was a boy there that night, too, a boy that you did not see, and one that didn't see you either. But a boy nevertheless, one who was playing with his kite, and ended up hearing something. The sound of a splash coming from the river. The boy did not see, did not want to, and ran back home. For days, he kept quiet, suffering from a fever, until he was able to raise his voice and talk about what he had heard.

Kita remembers that the boy described what he heard that night as a little nothing, said that it could have been anything, and that it didn't have to be you, but still, in that little nothing, the river was present, and it was said that child was lost forever.

After that, the village soon began slip back into a routine, with the nightly search coming to an end. There were less flyers blowing around in the wind, too, because the story the boy told took root, and seemed to more and more people the only possible solution.

The official story was then that you wandered off the track in the woods, and took a fatal tumble down the hill next to the raging river. Many people speculated also that you weren't found because the currents carried off your little body. The small, yellow ribbon that was found next to the rocks supported that theory.

Your mother, in a picture that will lived forever in his head, listened one day to someone telling your story. Extremely pale, she listened only for a few minutes and then shrieked at that person that it was they who had taken her daughter. The person was perplexed, repulsed, and pushed your mother aside, but she continued screaming that everyone who told such a tale could only have been involved. She claimed that everyone wanted to hide their crimes away with an illusionary tale. She said this then and continued to do so on many other occasions, even shouting it until late in the evening: my daughter didn't disappear, she was taken by bastards, by dirty bastards who didn't have love in their hearts, and they wanted to take you because you were so bright, and good.

Kita remembers how he used to fall asleep on many nights with your mother's shouts fading into the background. She always started out loud, but then as she screamed until her throat hurt, he could always make out when her voice broke. And sometimes, he'd silently get out of bed, slide open the curtains of his room, and silently watch as she slid down the wall of your house, sobs wracking against her chest. Kita knows that it was always his grandmother who went out with a blanket to wrap up your mother.

But these breakdowns also roughly came around the time his grandmother put her foot down, and forced his sister to move back in with them. It happened after your mother had had an incident with a child from the neighborhood.

Kita himself wasn't there, since by that time school had started again, and he was forced to study a lot, away from home, but soon everyone was talking about the incident. He's sure that no one missed it. 

Apparently, when your mother was faced with the sight of a child, a girl around your age, wearing pigtails in 'your' way, coming home from playing in the woods, she snapped, and went up to the child to roughly grasp her by the arm. She called the child by your name, shook the girl's tiny body while she kept on screaming and screaming. The child even burst into tears, but your mother did not stop. You won't ever go out of the house again, your mother shrieked, gasping and coughing, outside it's dangerous, outside you'll get lost, and I'll never let that happen, I'll never let you go.

She kept doing this until the police intervened, and by the time she was allowed back home again, his mother had already dragged away his sister.

His sister didn't complain with words, but it was now as if she couldn't hear people when they talked. When his grandmother tried to speak to her, she merely stared at her the whole time as if she saw her but didn't understand a single word that was being said.

━━━━

The second onslaught of the 'attack of the telephone' was by far the worst. This time, even for Kita, was perhaps the worst, and he remembers that most of his nightmares come from that period, rather than anything before it.

While at first, the calls in the early weeks of the disappearance were always meant well, always emotional, and always sincere, as time went on, the calls changed in their nature. The letters and works of art that always appeared at your front door also changed format then. They stopped being only emotional notes addressed to you, or to your mother. The poems sill arrived on a daily basis, but something was different.

Suddenly, there were other things there, too. Old, broken toys started appearing, and with them, sometimes tattered baby clothing, yellow in color. One day, Kita even remembers seeing a bundle of cut off hair, braided, and once there was even a doll, decked in yellow, with your braids. But the doll wasn't normal, there was red paint splattered all over her. 

Red and yellow, those soon became the colors everyone associated with you. This strangely saddened Kita more than almost anything else at the time. Before that, red wasn't ever a color you liked, it was only yellow, and never an ugly yellow, only a bright, fresh yellow, the yellow of the flowers.

Then dead rats, and ugly notes, with ugly words, and horrible scribbled versions of what could have happened to you. It was there that Kita for first time realized the extent of human cruelty, but his grandmother told him not to react that way, and she only ever quietly went over and calmly picked everything up to throw it into the trash. Kita isn't even sure if your mother noticed all that happened, but while she maybe didn't notice, he's sure that she at least felt it. That change in the air.

Kita certainly remembers feeling it, and the horrible awakening that came with it? He remembers that, too. 

It happened after a long day of school, it was already dark outside, and he knew his grandmother was with his sister, who could no longer drag herself to the bus station to wait for him. He walked home slowly that day, and that was why he ended up seeing it. If only he hadn't been so slow that day...

There was a girl in front of her house, maybe sixteen, and one slightly younger boy was with her. The girl's hands were dipped in red paint, while the boy was carrying a small bucket beside her.

Kita stared in horror at a wall where various mean messages about you were written in red, ugly letters.

Help us look for Y/n, the devil wants to eat her.

Y/n now runs a hotel under the river, come join her.

May the dead eat the L/n family.

Tears pricked at his eyes, but Kita didn't say anything to the kids, he just continued silently watching as they gathered up their things and quickly ran away. They didn't say a single word to him.

And he didn't want them to, because at that moment, all he could do was stare at that wall dripping in red. 

What did you ever do to deserve this?

━━━━

Kita never really stopped walking through the woods. People assumed, as time went by, that there were other reasons for his walks, but those walks were for you, even though Kita isn't like his sister, his grandmother your mother. After a year, he gave up actively searching for you, because he was sure then that you truly were a child lost forever.

You were gone and no one would ever find you. His time growing up alongside you was over, and as soon as he acknowledged that, he stopped looking, and went on with his life. Highschool was coming up for him, and life never stopped for the living. 

But in the time he gave up hoping for your return, and accepted reality, he still did a lot of thinking, and came to a lot of conclusions. He realized why some people, namely your mother, and probably also his sister, would never be able to get over you. His sister was getting better and better with each year, but she was not growing up in the way everyone had been expecting her to.

But he supposed that was to be expected.

That was one of his conclusions, but perhaps the most accurate one was the one about your eternalized suffering. It was simple, really. 

There was no body, your death came without form, without substance. Everyone was told that you were dead, but there was nothing your mother could cling to in grief, no cold hands she could clutch as the tears streamed down her cheeks. There was no lifeless version of you for whom the village could hold a funeral. 

So, you were gone, but at the same time, you weren't, because your shapeless death lurked about the village, looming over your house like a constant dreadful reminder of something they wanted to reach, but no longer existed.

Because there was no body, beaten and bloody, it made it harder to let go. In the minds of your mother, of his sister, you were still the usual Y/n, one that could walk, talk, run, and sing, someone they had once embraced, kissed, and caressed. To them, you were still whole; it would have been easier to let go of a broken thing.


	3. looking at the now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> looking at the now  
> feat. Come Back Home  
> by 2nei, unplugged version

He sees you in the yellow meadow that you can find only after taking a left at the broken tree, he sees you in the flowing rivers that carry the freshly fallen blossoms away, but most of all, he'll see you everyday, without fail, in his younger sister, and in the way she wears her braids, and lets the wind ruffle them. The familiar twin braids, decorated with the flowers of yesterday, bright and yellow. In her, he can feel your presence most of all.

'One two three, you left me, but I hear your breath from somewhere...'

There's more, because to Kita, it feels as if all you ever touched as a child will forever safe- keep a part of you. Even now that you're indefinitely gone, and have been for many years, he finds your younger half-sister, who he passes every now and then on the street, but doesn't really know, who talks like you, and sometimes looks a bit like you, too. But she is still someone else. 

'Once again, four five six...  
Red tears fall down, I miss your scent that embraced me...'

She is someone else in the way she thinks, he can see that, and in the way she acts, and the way she smiles. You are there, but it's never the real you, and given what's happened to you, this presence of yours is something that weighs down on everyone who ever knew you. Even ten years later, you have a considerable presence.

'Why?  
Why?  
You have gone away...'

Remembering you, your smile is always at the forefront of his mind, warm and jittery. Your smile always spoke of an adventure, and it's because of your smile that people like his grandma and your mother still believe that you're alive. Kita knows this isn't the case. You've been the lost child for ten years now. Kita knows you're not suddenly going to become unlost.

But your mother, young at the time of your disappearance, to this day, still goes around telling everyone what will happen 'when' you came back, never 'if'. She talks proudly of your achievements, says that at age nine, you were smart and kind like no other. Having known you personally, Kita can't help but agree.

You were all that. But your mother says you still are.

It's that strong presence of yours that does this, Kita's sure. But while there are still those who believe, Kita knows that in these last years, everyone save for your mother has, in one way or another, managed to move on.

His sister, two years after your disappearance, by the time life for him was somewhat 'normal' again and he had learned how to deal with grief, also started detaching herself from your disappearance. It was slow, and it happened with the air of someone who was lost, and shunned by society, gradually returning, and relearning the most basic of tasks. It started with her slowly learning how to talk properly again. 

After your disappearance, his sister developed a tic in her left eye, and her speech was often reduced to a slurred mess. She messed up sentences, couldn't spell simple words without mistakes, and moved with a limp in her left leg. It was partly the lack of sleep getting to her, but there was more to it as well.

'Come back home...'

Only two years later, things started improving, but with this improvement, Kita started witnessing a change taking place in his sister. It was hard to describe what was happening, but if he had to, Kita would use the word 'assimilate' in this context.

And this word, defined by the dictionary that his school gave him, and that he still likes to calmly leaf through on some evenings, means to take something into the mind, to absorb something into the system, and to take in something that can be utilized as nourishment for something else.

So, his sister, in her desperation to move on, to cope, was assimilating you, and in an odd show of a coping method, was turning some of your virtues into hers. Even in her face, in the curve of her nose, the crinkle of her eyes, his sister was starting to resemble you. It made him nervous, how she was taking your mind and putting you into her own, absorbing you into her system. And she was using this, all of you, as a nourishment for her grief.

The braids that were you, the color yellow that was you, the way you spoke with little dialect, the way you animated your gestures, colored your voice, and looked at the world through a certain lens: all of this, she assimilated. 

She did this as a plea of sort, too, Kita thinks.

'Can you come back?  
Don't leave me at the end of the cold world...' 

His grandmother reacted kindly to everything his sister did, to everything that was happening to her, but sometimes, she'd give his sister quiet advice: when you're older, you'll see what I see, too, but for now, go for it slowly, it's not a race, taking care of yourself is not something that happens overnight, so don't rush.

He didn't understand, but her words, even though they were meant for his sister, helped him somehow, and he stopped feeling that odd nervousness around her. It was unnecessary, not logical at all, and while it was true that you were gone, his little sister wasn't, and that meant there was someone he had to be close to, and take care of. She was his sister, after all, and she wasn't lost.

'But come back to my side.  
Come back home.  
Can you come back?'

━━━━

'I'm pushing back all the pain, I'm still waiting for you like this...'

More years went by, Kita got older, Kita became the captain of the volleyball team, and Kita lived, in a happy, but always subdued, gentle way. This didn't necessarily have anything to do with the loss of you, however. Kita just was as Kita was, and the words attributed to him even then were those of a quiet, gentle, but coldly logical player. Not much changed since childhood. 

In truth, Kita just took his grandmother's words, the ones that said someone is always watching, and lived by them. Living through a hard situation made him also appreciate wise advice more, and listening to his grandmother was something that never lead him astray. 

Someone is always watching.

It didn't matter who was watching, because someone always was, and that knowledge helped him implement a routine that he could live by. Kita wasn't emotionless, he wasn't really cold either, he felt a lot, he cared a lot, but he lived by words that told him he could choose when and how to express emotions. There was a right time and a wrong time for things. 

His sister learned that, too, but she didn't live by it the way he did.  
She became happier, stopped resembling you so much physically, too, but started, even more than before, thinking like you, so that in the end, Kita recognized the way the people in the village were treating his sister. They were treating her in the way they once treated you.

But his sister didn't notice, because after the first few years went by, she got busy, studied harder than everyone, and made big plans for her future. A lot of people were happy, because it seemed that you, and more so the trauma of losing you, was slowly being erased from her memory. Kita, however, knows that they were always wrong about this, because you never left his sister. That was something that just wasn't possible, really.

You were there, but you were also not there. Instead of having you haunt her like a constant horrible reminder, his sister figured out ways to remember you vividly, but only at those times she specifically chose. It helped her a lot, helped her make sense of the world. 

At all times she kept pictures of you in her breast-pocket. On the holidays she insisted on showing them to everyone, even though they had seen them before. But she made them look at them again, pointing out how fascinating you looked at this angle, and in this light, or in that summer dress. Sometimes, she'd bring back the old art projects, your white angels in yellow flower fields. On some occasions, although these were rare, she'd even bring out the old videos where you could be seen talking.

You were always captured on video in your most euphoric moments.

But watching your videos was not something she did often, because more so than even your smile, it was your voice that made her remember everything, and suffer. That was why she only did it on special occasions, and never shared it with her school friends like she shared her pictures of you. The videos were only for when his grandmother could take her into her arms and brush her hair.

She had rules for remembering you, because even when she was young, she knew of the possible dangers. She was sensitive, and remembering you too fiercely was always a danger for her mind, for her state of being, and her ability to live normally.

Kita, on the other hand, didn't need to be as cautious as she did, he wasn't in danger of collapsing if he thought about you one moment too long. He could think of you every now and then, go on his usual, nighttime walks, because that was what he owed you, and still be perfectly fine. He'd be sad, but he'd be fine.

Sometimes, usually every year on the exact day you went missing, the day before his birthday, Kita would reserve a day for you. And then he'd think of you, not in a horribly sad manner, but in his manner, and on those days, his replies were more laconic than ever.

But that was the only thing he couldn't really help. The memories were vivid at times, and Kita always remembers a lot on those days. Sometimes the occasion on which you and his sister excitedly dressed up for Halloween, and dragged him out with you, only to find that nobody in the village had prepared sweets. He remembers how you told his sister that it didn't matter, and asked instead if the two of you could have popsicles from the convenience store.

"Now? It's cold out, you'll get sick."

"No! I won't, it's cold, just like my heart," you said, excitedly gesturing to your witch costume. You grinned up at him with your painted lips that were starting to smudge, and Kita remembers that in order to not make that grin fade, and to cheer up his still slightly miffed and huffing sister, he quietly nodded, digging in his pocket until he found the right amount of money.

He bought you your popsicles.

Sometimes he'd think about how you and his sister would play with the flowers and the plants. Out of the mud, a bit of water, and some old, rundown pots his grandmother didn't need anymore, the two of you created your own kitchen. You'd make mud dishes, soups sprinkled with yellow flowers, cake out of weeds, decorated with a mud glazing, and lots and lots of cookies of different shapes and size, out of various 'ingredients' he couldn't even hope to name. Then, on some days, after the two of you spent hours 'cooking', you would invite him, his grandmother, and when she had time in the evenings, even your mother, to come dine at your fine restaurant.

Kita also remembers the day you presented him with one of those carefully woven wreaths. He remembers exactly how he briefly looked down at you, patted your head, and gave you a smile.

You were nine and tiny, but you boldly announced your affection for him, and even asked him to marry you. In return, he remembers that he only ruffled your head again, before joining his grandma to help her with the housework. He didn't really bother with a reply, because at the time, as kids, it seemed a given that he had years to formulate that reply. 

'I hate you for not answering, I wonder if you'll miss me, sometimes, too, yeah...'

But it didn't happen that way, and the time you did have turned out to be months rather than years. Thinking back, Kita knows that because the village was so small, and because the three of you were always together despite the fact that he was a bit older (Kita never really had any friends his age before he joined the volleyball club), and that he didn't really play with you, and more so preferred watching over you, everyone did think the two of you would one day get married. Your mother thought so, his grandmother secretly thought so, and his sister (and here he could tell very clearly, because she was always mean to him when the thought occurred to her) also occasionally, albeit begrudgingly, thought so.

'I'm trapped in a time without you  
I can't see ahead, I'm scared...'

He doesn't admit it, but maybe, just maybe, it is true that it's because of you that he can't really get himself to date at all. Marriage seems wrong, too, especially when he hasn't even responded to the first proposal he got.

'The many days that are unfinished, it seems like they'll be waiting for us...'

You actually disappeared on the day before his birthday. His sister even told him that you were out for his sake, picking flowers because you lacked the money to buy a proper present. She didn't want to tell him this, but Kita wanted to know. He's logical enough to know that it doesn't mean it's his fault, and it's only fair that he learns as much as he can about what happened. He owes that, along with the walks, to you.

'Where are you? Where?  
Too far away...'

His sister was the last person to really see you, and she talks to him often, now older, about the sight she still can't get out of her head: you waving a hand in farewell, as you march onwards towards the river, basket in hand, clothed in a yellow dress, your hair in your typical braids. She tells him how the sun is going down in that image, how it cast shadows on your shrinking figure as you walk away.

'The only thing left here is your shadow, my longing for you tortures me more than my loneliness...'

This dream, this horrible dream, in which she is chasing after you, her nineteen year old self, running after your nine year old self, trying to stop you, is something that Kita thinks will never leave her alone. He knows this as she explains to him that she can never reach you, for the distance keeps growing, and no matter how much she cries and shouts, you don't stop. Little, cheerful you keeps walking off into those woods, where everyone, at least deep down, knows your death awaits.

'Seems like I can catch the sound of your laughter, but the moments weakly scatter like a sand castle...'

The worst thing, his sister tells him, is that you're so unaware of your fate in that dream of hers. Sometimes she can even talk to you, and she always tries to convince you not to go out, or to take her with you, but you don't listen, you shrug her off with a grin, you hug her in reassurance — and always, no matter what, you still end up leaving alone.

This is what haunts his sister.

'Every night, I get nightmares,  
even in my dreams, I call out your name...'

She'll scream until her throat is sore, like your mother used to, but you don't hear, you never do.

━━━━

It's at the end of this year that something changes. Your presence emerges for a moment, in a way he never thought it would. At the end of the river, not so far away from the meadow, and at the entrance of a small cave, your remains are finally found. The storm shifted the rocks, and as a result, you were found. The lost child was found, and stopped being the lost child.

The story that was passed around in earlier years soon became the told truth. This is your story, and your story ends with a funeral, with the sobs of his sister, and the shivers of his grandmother. But everyone, including Kita, is relieved. The lost child finds a new home under the earth, with wreaths of yellow, and with words of love.

Your mother only nods gratefully to the boys, and at first, Kita wonders if this means she'll get better again now that she has a grave to cry on.

His thoughts here are wrong.

'In a time where everything changes, the one thing that doesn't change...'

Your mother's grief can't change. And a couple of young boys, only fifteen years or so of age, who venture out to go fishing, make him understand that two months later, and they do this by carrying back home with them the news that in the river, near the rocks, there is a body floating face down in the water. And although the young are frantic, the children crying, nobody who was there for the searches ten years ago is. Everyone knows that the body is that of your mother, before anyone even goes down to check. They know that her body and grief are now washed away in the same river that washed away the lost child.

And so in the end, the lost child never came back home, but home will gradually find the lost child, with one part already having arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> author's note:  
> hey *waves*! uh, i finally finished this little project, and i hope you enjoyed, and that it didn't make you too sad. stories of grief have always interested me, and i guess this is my take on a journey. 
> 
> i know this isn't particularly good since there is no action, and partly just an excuse for me to write long monologues that bore people, but i thought with a serious topic, it might work. not sure if i succeeded, but i tried, and i hope that i at least got kita right in some ways, despite probably butchering his character in others.
> 
> thank you all for the support!

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own haikyuu, or any of the characters. This book is also inspired by Elena Ferrante, and the disappearance of Tina. I totally draw inspiration from her at all times, and especially the feelings she wants to portray in her fourth book


End file.
